This article examines how symbols of Islamic repression and massacre affect radicalisation among North Africans living in the UK. It suggests that these symbols are an insufficient but necessary cause in the larger process of ‘radicalisation’, because they provide a basis for perceptions of injustice. In this context, myths, memories and symbols of colonial repression, contemporary repression of free political expression in North African states and current perceptions of western ‘oppression’ of Islam may be perceived as rationales for ‘oxygenation’. Oxygenation here denotes exchanges among different Muslim communities throughout Britain which potentially facilitate terrorist networks. Oxygenation in turn contributes to ‘blowback’, here in the guise of perceptions among British Muslims of global oppression of the Umma, especially understood in light of the Iraqi and Afghani insurgencies. This article also explores how these symbols may be cultivated and disseminated at popular and elite levels.
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